Translation ranking

Even in routine translation practice one can see that there are different ranks of translation, that one rank of translation consists of rather simple substitutions whereas another involves relatively sophisticated and not just purely linguistic analysis.

Several attempts have been made to develop a translation theory based on different translation ranks or levels as they are sometimes called. Among those one of the most popular in the former Soviet Union was the “theory of translation equivalence level (TEL)” developed by V.Komissarov.

According to this theory the translation process fluctuates passing from formal inter-language transformations to the domain of conceptual interrelations.

V.Komissarov’s approach seems to be a realistic interpretation of the translation process; however, this approach fails to demonstrate when and why one translation equivalence level becomes no longer appropriate and why, to get a correct translation, you have to pass to a higher TEL.

Y.Retsker maintains that any two languages are related by regular correspondences (words, word-building patterns, syntactical structures) and “irregular ones”. The irregular correspondences cannot be formally represented and only the translator’s knowledge and intuition can help to find the matching formal expression in the target language for a concept expressed in the source language.

According to J.Firth, in order to bridge languages in the process of translation, one must use the whole complex of linguistic and extralinguistic information rather than limit oneself to purely linguistic objects and structures.

J.Catford, similar to V.Komissarov and J.Firth, interprets translation as a multi-level process. According to Catford a certain set of translation tools characteristic of a certain level constitutes a rank of translation and a translation performed using that or another set of tools is called rank bound.

All these theories try to explain the process of translation to a degree of precision required for practical application, but no explanation is complete so far.

The transformational approach quite convincingly suggests that in any language there are certain regular syntactic, morphological, and word-building structures which may be successfully matched with their analogies in another language during translation.

The transformational approach forms the basis of machine translation design – almost any machine translation system uses the principle of matching forms of the languages involved in translation. The difference is only in the forms that are matched and the rules of matching.

The denotative approach treats different languages as closed systems with specific relationships between formal and conceptual aspects; hence in the process of translation links between the forms of different languages are established via conceptual equivalence.

The communicational approach highlights a very important aspect of translation – the matching of thesauruses. Translation may achieve its ultimate target of rendering a piece of information only if the translator knows the users’ language and the subject matter of the translation well enough (i.e. if the translator’s language and subject thesauruses are sufficiently complete). This may self-evident, but should always be kept in mind, because all translation mistakes result from the insufficiencies in the thesauruses.

Moreover, wholly complete thesauruses are the ideal case and it is still virtually impossible to know everything about any possible subject matter related to the translation.

Different approaches differ only in the accents placed on this or that component but all theories discussed recognize the following three basic components of translation:

Meaning of a word or word combination in the source language (concept or concepts corresponding to this word or word combination in the minds of the source language speakers).

Equivalence of this meaning expressed in a word or word combination of the target language (concept or concepts corresponding to this word or word combination in the minds of the target language speakers).

Extralinguistic information pertaining to the original meaning and/or its conceptual equivalent after the translation.

So, to put it differently, what you can do in translation is either match individual words and combinations of the two languages directly (transformational approach), or understand the content of the source message and render it using the formal means of the target language (denotative approach) with due regard of the translation recipient and background information (communicational approach).

The hierarchy if these methods may be different depending on the type of translation. Approach priorities depending on the type of translation are given in Table below.

Thus, in oral translation priority is given to denotative method, because a translator is first listening to the speaker and only after some time formulates the translation, which is very seldom a structural copy of the source speech.

In simultaneous translation as opposed to consecutive priority is given to direct transformations since a simultaneous interpreter simply has no time for conceptual analysis.

In written translation, when you seem to have time for everything, priority is also given to simple transformations (perhaps, with exception of poetic translation). This is no contradiction, just the path of least resistance in action – it is not worthwhile to resort to complex methods unless simple ones fail.

It should be born in mind, however, that in any translation we observe a combination of different methods.